Federal Subsidies to Private Luxury Landowners

Federal Subsidies to Private Luxury Landowners

In the midst of a record-breaking budget deficit, how vital do you think it is to hand taxpayer money out to luxury beachfront land owners, some of whom are not even American?

Here is a news update from Taxpayers for Common Sense. TCS is the best organization that monitors excessive government spending, corruption and corporate welfare.

Beach Budget Scandal

As you dream about your summer vacation, imagine stopping at the bank on your way to the beach, taking out all of your money, and dumping it into the ocean. Sound crazy? Well, that’s exactly what the Army Corps of Engineers does with millions of tax dollars every year under the federal beach renourishment program.

America’s beaches attract more than just sand crabs and surfers: they are also a magnet for the rich and famous. The American cultural elite have long flocked to the beach during the dog days of summer and increasingly, they have taken to buying beachside properties, building beachfront villas, and plastering up “No Trespassing” signs. At the same time that this building trend has intensified, America’s beaches have been doing what they always did — eroding and shifting. In an expensive exercise worthy of Sisyphus, these wealthy beach landowners have convinced Congress that pumping sand on beaches to keep their poorly placed houses from floating away should be a federal responsibility.

The Army Corps renourishment efforts are both costly and ineffective. Though it continues to seek federal funds for beach restoration year after year, the Corps knows very well that these projects are bound to fail. The agency dredges sand from offshore locations and pumps it onshore to rebuild eroded areas. But, beach erosion is a continual process, and replenishment projects serve only to temporarily keep sand from washing back out to sea.

Today, from Florida to New York to California, Corps restoration projects are increasingly becoming the primary “solution” to beach erosion — which is a problem only when private developers built too close to the coastline and are at high risk for hurricane and storm damage. Beach rebuilding is now the fastest growing area of the Corps’ work. In New Jersey, the Corps has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to dredge sand from the ocean floor and dump it on miles of coastline. Experts agree that virtually no beach replenishment program has lasted more than five years without costly rebuilding efforts — in New Jersey, most of the Corps work eroded within three years. In one case, more than half of a 350-foot wide beach all but washed away.

Beach lovers might argue that the replenishment program is necessary so Americans can continue to spend summer vacations at the beach. But who really benefits from beach restoration? Homeowners benefit from increased property values and communities might benefit from increased property taxes and tourism. But, even though public access is the law on replenished shorelines and federal taxpayers have spent hundreds of million on beach renourishment, some cities and towns that willingly receive the federal subsidy are creatively blocking “outsiders” from using “their” beach.

Efforts by the Clinton and Bush administrations to reduce the federal beach building program have been met with fierce resistance by New Jersey and Florida lawmakers who are unwilling to give up millions in federal dollars. Both administrations argued that popular coastal areas can and should pay the majority of replenishment costs because they are the ones who benefit economically. The 2006 budget continues this trend by saying that repetitive renourishment of beaches should be a local responsibility. The Bush administration has requested only $46 million for these types of projects, less than half of what the Congress provided last year.

Taxpayers need to put a message in a bottle, and cast it down the Potomac to Capitol Hill: draw a line in the sand and stop sending our hard-earned tax dollars out to sea.

For more information, contact Keith Ashdown at (202)-546-8500 ext. 110 or by email at keith@taxpayer.net TCS is at www.taxpayer.net

We are Hanno Beck, Lindy Davies, Fred Foldvary, Mike O'Mara, Jeff Smith, and assorted volunteers, all dedicated to bringing you the news and views that make a difference in our species struggle to win justice, prosperity, and eco-librium.

Linda Martinez
Federal and State Government 2301
May 10, 2009
Subject: Site Reviews

It is necessary to evaluate the pros and cons of the ocean front properties and nutrition of each site for environmental impacts, as well as long and short-term benefits to society. Oftentimes, critics of renourishment say the benefits of such projects are exaggerated by vested interests such as local residents and developers, and that most projects are designed to protect oceanfront structures that probably should not have been built in the first place. Also, it can be argued that in light of global warming and sea level rise, the costs will invariably outweigh the benefits in the long run. In short, beach nourishment simply postpones the inevitable destruction of coastal buildings.

Nourishment restores and widens the recreational beach. Structures behind beach are protected as long as the added sand remains. When erosion continues, beach nourishment does not leave hazards on the beach or in the surf zone. This is a big advantage when compared with “hard” beach stabilization structures like seawalls or groins. Seawalls may protect structures behind the beach, but they almost always cause the beach in front of the wall to become narrower. If erosion breaches the seawall, then debris from the wall will be left on the beach and in the surf. Since beach nourishment only puts sand on the beach, no debris is left when it erodes.

A good rule of thumb is that nourished beaches erode two or three times faster than natural beaches. Erosion rates can differ widely, however. The biggest factor for the lifetime of a nourished beach is the number of storms that affect the beach. Storms are unpredictable, so nourished beach lifetimes are unpredictable too. The amount of sand added per yard of beach length and the sand placement design determine the new beach width. Wider nourished beaches last longer. Beach nourishment is expensive and must be repeated periodically. The beach turns into a construction zone during nourishment.

Gosh 46 Million dollars! That would be 20 cents per american. Now what about a 200 Billion / Year war? What would that work out to? It would make a health care net for every one. I appreciate the focus on waste, and look forward to the time when 46 million dollars wasted is an outrage.

There should always have been a one mile set back line from our beaches. A line beyond
which no private and darned little public
construction is allowed. It is not too late.
As storms remove structures the land should
be returned to national seashore status.
Owners thus evicted would be compensated.
Mother nature can be allowed to work her charms on the beaches and the public … all of the public … can once again enjoy. I
remember the Alabama Gulf beaches of my
childhood. Dreamland …

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

an alternative to conventional land trusts. Just as it seems some functions should not be left to the market – private courts and cops invite corruption (while private mediation is fine) – just so some land should not be left in the market. That said, sacred sites do not make much of a model for treating the vast acreage of land that we need to use. So the usual trust model, which is anti-use and counter-market, can not apply where it’s needed most. Trust proponents worry about ownership and control – two very human ambitions – but they’re not central. Supposedly, we the people own millions acres – acres that private corporations treat as private fiefdoms – and conversely, the Nature Conservancy owns wilderness the public can some places use as parks. So, the issue is not who owns but who gets the rent – ideally, all of us.

a new field of study offered in place of economics, as astronomy replaced astrology and chemistry replaced alchemy. Conventional economics, in which GNP can do well while people suffer, is a bit too superstitious for my renaissance upbringing. If I’m to propitiate unseen forces, it won’t be inflation or “the market”; let it be theEgyptian cat goddess. At least then we’d have fewer rats. Meanwhile, believing in reason leads to a new policy, also christened geonomics. That’s the proposal to share (a kind of management, the “nomics” part) the worth of Mother Earth (the “geo” part). If our economies are to work right, people need to see prices that tell the truth. Now taxes and subsidies distort prices, tricking people into squandering the planet. Using land dues and rent dividends instead lets prices be precise, guiding people to get more from less and thereby shrink their workweek. More free time ought to make us happy enough to evolve beyond economics, except when nostalgic for superstition.

the study of the money we spend on the nature we use. When we pay that money to private owners, we reward both speculation and over-extraction. Robert Kiyosaki’s bestseller, Rich Dad’s Prophecy, says, “One of the reasons McDonald’s is such a rich company is not because it sells a lot of burgers but because it owns the land at some of the best intersections in the world. The main reason Kim and I invest in such properties is to own the land at the corner of the intersection. (p 200) My real estate advisor states that the rich either made their money in real estate or hold their money in real estate.” (p 141, via Greg Young) When government recovers the rents for natural advantages for everyone, it can save citizens millions. Ben Sevack, Montreal steel manufacturer, tells us (August 12) that Alberta, by leasing oil & gas fields, recovers enough revenue to be the only province in Canada to get by without a sales tax and to levy a flat provincial income tax. While running for re-election, provincial Premier Ralph Klein proposes to abolish their income tax and promises to eliminate medical insurance premiums and use resource revenue to pay for all medical expense for seniors. After all this planned tax-cutting and greater expense, they still expect a large budget surplus. Even places without oil and gas have high site values in their downtowns, and high values in their utility franchises. Recover the values of locations and privileges, displace the harmful taxes on sales, salaries, and structures, then use the revenue to fund basic government and pay residents a dividend, and you have geonomics in action.

a manual. The world did not come without a way for people to prosper, and the planet to heal and stay well; that way is geonomics. Economies are part of the ecosystem. Both generate surpluses and follow self-regulating feedback loops. A cycle like the Law of Supply and Demand is one of the economy’s on/off loops. Our spending for land and resources – things that nobody made and everybody needs – constitutes our society’s surplus. Those profits without production (remember, nobody produced Earth) can become our commonwealth. To share it, we could pay land dues in to the public treasury (wouldn’t oil companies love that?) and get rent dividends back, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Doing so let’s us axe taxes and jettison subsidies. Taxes and subsidies distort price (the DNA of exchange), violate quid pro quo by benefiting the well-connected more than anyone else, reinforce hierarchy of state over citizen, and are costly to administer (you don’t really need so much bureaucracy, do you?). Conversely, land dues motivate people to not waste sites, resources, and the ecosystem while rent dividends motivate people to not waste themselves. Receiving this income supplement – a Citizens Dividend – people can invest in their favorite technology or outgrow being “economan” and shrink their overbearing workweek in order to enjoy more time with family, friends, community, and nature. Then in all that free time, maybe we could figure out just what we are here for.

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat — or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off — a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

a way to have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. Last summer’s expansive forest fires shed light on growing class resentment in the West. Old log-gers and ranchers rankled at the new urgency to stamp out the blazes that threatened the recent Aspenesque settlers. The newcomers expected working class firemen to make protecting their expensive homes top priority. (Chr Sci Mntr, Spt 7) The tinder for this envy? Rich people moving in bid up the price of land, making it hard to afford by people on the margin. The fault really lies with our system of privatizing land value. If this rising value were collected by land dues and shared by rent dividends – the essence of geonomic policy – who’d complain? The more people move in, the higher the land value, and the fatter the dividend paid to residents. Then people on the margin might go out of their way to invite rich outsiders in.

not exactly Georgism, the Single Tax on land value proposed by Henry George. He did, tho’, inspire most of the real-world implementations of the land tax that some jurisdictions enjoy today, and modern thinkers to craft geonomics. While his name and our remedy both begin with “geo” since both words refer to “Earth”, the two have their differences. (a) George pegs land monopoly as the fundamental flaw while geonomics faults Rent retention. (b) To fix the flaw, George was content to use a tax, while geonomics jettisons them in favor of price-like fees. (c) George focused on the taking while geonomics headlines the sharing. George envisioned an enlightened state judiciously spending the collected Rent while geonomics would turn the lion’s share over to the citizens via a dividend. (d) And George, as was everyone in his era, was pro-growth while geonomics sees economies as alive, growing, maturing, and stabilizing. Despite these differences, George should be recognized as great an economist as Euclid was a geometrician.

what you do when you see economies as part of the ecosystem, following feedback loops and storing up energy. Surplus energy – fat or profit – enables us to produce and reproduce. To recycle society’s surplus, the commonwealth, geonomics would replace taxes with land dues (charged to users of sites and resources, in-cluding the EM spectrum, and extra to polluters), and replace subsidies with rent dividends to citizens (a la Alaska’s oil dividend). Without taxes and subsidies to distort them, prices become precise, reflect accurately our costs and values; then, motivated by no more than the bottom line, both producers and consumers make sustainable choices. While no place uses geonomics in its entirety, some places use parts of it, most notably a shift of the property tax off buildings, onto locations. Shifting the property tax drives efficient use of land, in-fills cities, improves the housing stock, makes homes affordable, engenders jobs and investment opportunities, lowers crime, raises civic participation, etc – overall it makes cities more livable. Geonomics – a way to share the bounty of nature and society – is something we can work for locally, globally, and in between.

a manual. The world did not come without a way for people to prosper, and the planet to heal and stay well; that way is geonomics. Economies are part of the ecosystem. Both generate surpluses and follow self-regulating feedback loops. A cycle like the Law of Supply and Demand is one of the economy’s on/off loops. Our spending for land and resources – things that nobody made and everybody needs – constitutes our society’s surplus. Those profits without production (remember, nobody produced Earth) can become our commonwealth. To share it, we could pay land dues in to the public treasury (wouldn’t oil companies love that?) and get rent dividends back, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Doing so let’s us axe taxes and jettison subsidies. Taxes and subsidies distort price (the DNA of exchange), violate quid pro quo by benefiting the well-connected more than anyone else, reinforce hierarchy of state over citizen, and are costly to administer (you don’t really need so much bureaucracy, do you?). Conversely, land dues motivate people to not waste sites, resources, and the ecosystem while rent dividends motivate people to not waste themselves. Receiving this income supplement – a Citizens Dividend – people can invest in their favorite technology or outgrow being “economan” and shrink their overbearing workweek in order to enjoy more time with family, friends, community, and nature. Then in all that free time, maybe we could figure out just what we are here for.

a way to connect the dots. Making the cyber rounds is “The Cavernous Divide” by Scott Klinger, from AlterNet (posted March 21): “As the number of billionaires in the world expands, so does the number of those in poverty.” Duh. The yawning income gap is not news. Nearly every issue of our quarterly digest carries a similar quote. Yet the connection was worked out long ago by one of America’s greatest thinkers, Henry George, who labeled his masterpiece, Progress and Poverty. Techno- and socio-advances always enrich few and impoverish many. Yet progress also pushes up location values – the geonomic insight (is Silicon Valley cheaper now or more expensive?). Instead of taxing income, sales, or buildings, society could collect those values of sites, resources, EM spectrum, and ecosystem services via fees and dues, which would lower the income ceiling, and instead of lavishing corporate welfare, pay out the recovered revenue via dividends, which would jack up the income floor. Dots connected.